A year after the previous release, a new Tribler version was released recently and it includes new features, bug fixes as well as work towards anonymous streaming (using a built-in Tor-like network).

For those not familiar with Tribler, this is an open source, decentralized peer-to-peer client based on the BitTorrent protocol, supported by EU and Dutch research funding. The application includes features such as wiki-style channels, video-on-demand (watch videos while you download them) and more and is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Like other BitTorrent clients, Tribler features a search box you can use to find content however, the search results come directly from other peers, without using a central server and this makes it immune to government anti-piracy attacks (the application will continue to work if the torrent trackers are pulled offline), claims an article from dailymail.co.uk.

Anonymous BitTorrent

The Tribler team wants their application to use truly anonymous streaming with the help of a built-in Tor-like network which routes all data through a series of peers – “Tribler users then become their own Tor network helping each other to hide their IP-addresses through three encrypted proxies”, notes TorrentFreak.

“Adding three layers of proxies gives you more privacy. Three layers of protection make it difficult to trace you. Proxies no longer need to be fully trusted. A single bad proxy can not see exactly what is going on.

The first proxy layer encrypts the data for you and each next proxy adds another layer of encryption. You are the only one who can decrypt these three layers correctly. Tribler uses three proxy layers to make sure bad proxies that are spying on people can do little damage.”

Tribler doesn’t anonymize streaming yet (except the 50mb test download included in this release). The plan is to achieve anonymous streaming with version 6.4 and anonymous seeding starting with version 6.5. Check out the Tribler roadmap and the “towards anonymity” page for details.

Tribler 6.3.1

The latest Tribler 6.3.1 includes various bits which should eventually lead to anonymous streaming in a future release:

Besides this, the latest Tribler 6.3.1 includes the following changes:

A year of bug fixing, polishing and performance tweaking;

thumbnail navigation:

single-click streaming from main screen;

channels can now optionally be browsed by thumbnails;

Youtube-like GUI composed of user-generated images;

Prepares the way for remote control navigation & operation.

complete rewrite of the elastic database engine (the dispersy overlay):

use of Twisted frameworks instead of our custom event-handlers;

less reliance on master bootstrap servers (new discovery community);

improvements in NAT puncturing efficiency;

faster data synchronization between Tribler peers.

Install Tribler in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

The Tribler downloads page (see below) offers Ubuntu deb downloads however, to get automatic updates, I recommend using the WebUpd8 Tribler PPA. To add the PPA and install Tribler in Ubuntu 14.04 or 14.10 / Linux Mint 17 and derivatives, use the following commands:

In case you were wondering, Exaile, a music player that exists since 2006, is not dead yet. A new Exaile version – 3.4.0 “We’re not dead yet” -, was released today and is, according to its developers, the best release of Exaile yet.

The release announcement mentions that many users have asked if the project is dead because there aren’t frequent releases and the answer to that is that Exaile is “a mature, stable audio player, and does much of what we want it to do, and does it well” and “the current development team uses Exaile on a regular basis, and will continue to add improvements and fix bugs as needed“.

For those not familiar with Exaile, this is a music player designed with Amarok 1.4 (probably the best Linux music player) in mind, but for GTK+, which comes with many of KDE’s Amarok 1.4 features, along with some extras. The application includes a numerous number of plugins, including: cover art search (Last.fm, Amazon), iPod Support, Dynamic Playlists, Equalizer, Karaoke, ReplayGain, Desktop Cover, Mini Mode, Moodbar, Multimedia Keys, LyricsMania, Icecast Radio, Podcasts, AudioScrobbler, NotifyOSD, Streamripper, Group Tagger, Alarm Clock, Inhibit Suspend and more.

Exaile plugins

Changes in Exaile 3.4.0:

audio output device can now be switched while playing songs;

improved unicode support;

an option has been added to disallow playback while another song is playing;

UDisks/UDisks2 support;

covers: cover manager improvements, saving to disk;

playlists can be shown in multiple panes;

the left tab panels are now closable;

BPM counter plugin has better UI integration;

enhanced smart playlists: create playlists based on other playlists and support for filtering over 20 different tag types;

BitTorrent Sync 1.4 was released recently and it features a revamped sharing workflow which makes it easier to share folders with others, along with a redesigned user interface.

In case you’re not familiar with BitTorrent Sync (BTSync), this is a tool that can be used to synchronize files between computers using the BitTorrent protocol, available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, NAS and mobile devices.

Because it synchronizes the files directly between computers (so without using cloud servers) and the connection is encrypted with AES-128 in counter mode, using a unique session key, BTSync is advertised as a highly secure way of synchronizing your data. However, because the application is not open source, many will argue with this statement.

With BitTorrent Sync 1.4, sharing got a lot easier: you no longer have to use Keys (formerly called Secrets) to give others access to folders, though that option is still available. Now you simply send a link to the person you want to share the folder with, he/she clicks it and BTSync walks them through the remaining steps (if any).

For each folder you share, you can select if you want to give the other(s) full read / write access or read only, you can set the link to expire after a period of time, set the link to only be used a number of times and finally, you can choose to share a folder only after you approve the peers:

One note though: in my test under Ubuntu, using the share link directly doesn’t work (the browser doesn’t recognize the btsync protocol) but there is a simple work-around: in the BTSync web interface click the link icon on the right and paste the link there.

Besides the major change in the way sharing works in BTSync, the latest 1.4 release also comes with a completely redesigned interface, which you can see throughout the screenshots in this article.

To use BitTorrent Sync on Linux, extract the downloaded archive and double click the “btsync” executable – nothing visible happens when double clicking it because BTSync runs in the background and on Linux, it’s controlled through its web interface. Then, open a web browser and enter the following address: http://localhost:8888 – the BTSync user interface will show up, asking you to create an username and (optional) password and then you can start using it:

For an open source alternative to BitTorrent Sync, check out Syncthing.

GIMP 2.8.14 was released yesterday, bringing various bug fixes and small enhancements. This is the stable GIMP branch and no new features are added in the 2.8.x releases, just bug fixes.

Update: the PPA now has GIMP 2.8.14: “Yesterday’s 2.8.12 release had broken library versioning, so we had to roll out GIMP 2.8.14 today. The only change is the fixed libtool versioning“.

Changes in GIMP 2.8.12 since 2.8.10:

Core:

OSX: Fix migration code for old GIMP directories;

Fix brush sizes when used from plug-ins;

Windows: Allow to Explorer-open files with UTF-8 characters in the filename;

Make XCF loading more robust against broken files;

GUI:

Make sure the widget direction matches the GUI language;

Remove the option to disable the warning when closing a modified image;

Fix canvas overlay widgets (like the text options) for tablets;

Make DND work between images in one dockable;

Libgimp:

Make gimp_image_get_name() return the string used for the image title;

Plug-ins:

Make script-fu-server more secure by listening to 127.0.0.1 by default and add a warning about changing that IP. This breaks the procedure’s API, but for security reasons;

Bring back proper script-fu translations;

General:

Massively clean up and fix the OSX build and bundle;

Add Jenkins tutorial;

Documentation updates;

Bug fixes;

Translation updates.

The next major GIMP release – 2.10 (release date not known yet) -, should bring a complete port to GEGL / high bit depths, support layer masks on layer groups, new warp tool, seamless cloning, unified transform tool and more. Most of these features are work in progress and already available in the latest GIMP development builds – if you want to give it a try under Ubuntu, you can use a PPA to install the latest GIMP 2.10 development builds.

Install GIMP 2.8.14 in Ubuntu / Linux Mint via PPA

To install the latest GIMP 2.8.14 in Ubuntu / Linux Mint and derivatives, you can use +Thorsten Stettin‘s PPA. Add the PPA and install GIMP using the commands below:

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